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Discuss different approaches to quitting, including medication

reiglet
Member

I quit the Chantix, too :-|

Hi everyone ~ My quit date was June 11 2010.  I started using Chantix as directed the week before my quit date.  hated the side effects of Chantix ~ couldn't sleep, my stomach was just torn up lots of intestinal problems.  In addition to not caring about smoking or cigarettes, I also ended up not caring about *anything* and just felt really blah all the time, I could take or leave just about anything and actually started to feel like I didn't have a lot of reasons to even get up out of bed some days.

I decided I was only going to take 1mg in the morning and skip the 2nd dose of the day, that helped with some of my intestinal problems at night, but the rest of the side-effects were still ever-present.  My doctor's office was worthless, when i called 2 1/2 weeks into it with my concerns about the intestinal problems they told me to just keep taking it i probably just need to get used to it blahblahblah but it got progressively worse instead of better.

So last week i quit taking the chantix cold turkey.  that was on wednesday the day of my last pill.  it is now a week & a day later and i still haven't smoked. but i'm afraid that if i don't take the chantix, my chances at long-term success, being a non-smoker for the rest of my life, will be nil.  I want to believe that i have the strength and fortitude to be a non-smoker on my own, for the rest of my life, without needing to take a pill that's going to make me feel like crap.  To be honest, i'm scared to death that i have totally ruined my chances at being an ex-smoker simply because i stopped taking a stupid pill. 😞

my husband told me to just remember how terrible the withdrawal from nicotine was, and how awful i felt while on the Chantix, that should be enough deterrent to keep me from starting to smoke again.  Anyone who has had a nicotine addiction knows that things like that probably really aren't much of a deterrent when push comes to shove:  look at the extremes most of us have gone to just to have a cigarette when we were smokers, or to get cigarettes when we were out of them.  Do you think that the past knowledge or memory of potentially feeling like crap would stop YOU from smoking if you were about to cave?

I wish i knew that i were strong enough to be able to quit without needing a pill 😞 This isn't my first time trying to quit smoking, but it is my first time that i'd tried to quit on chantix....

21 days and counting...... 🙂

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pojo
Member

I know how you feel...At first...I was afraid to stop using it because I was afraid that I would fail and I didn't want to go through all that "quit drama" again..but ya know what:  I wasn't born smoking and I wasn't born taking Chantix so I quit both and here I am.  I know you can do it...I will be smoke free for 1 year on 1/2/11 and only used Chantix for 3 1/2 months.  Yes, it helped me and then I was done with it.  You can do it...it is hard...but you can do it and 21 days is AWESOME!

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